Do NOT Let Hate Crimes Against Autistic Teens and Children Go Unpunished

 It's 8:54 am. Do you know who your teen's friends are? Are you talking to your teens about the nature of their friendships and what goes on in them? Parents. We must stop being so eager to make our kids indistinguishable from their peers that we place them in situations of risk like the ones I'm about to describe below. One true friend is worth 100 false ones. More friends don't make your teens more social. Good friends do.

I believe in preserving the dignity of disabled crime victims, so this is was a very difficult decision. I chose to publish a photograph because sometimes people just don't get it when we say someone was beaten by bullies. Language, particularly the use of the word "bully" rather than "assailant", diminishes what happened by word association. This was a brutal assault. This was not bullying. This is an effort to bring this understanding to people. I'm stunned at all the people who have already seen the picture below and the other photos like it in national media outlets and social media who are not understanding that someone sustained serious harm in an attack by multiple assailants.

Gavin Joseph, a teen with an Aspergers diagnosis, was brutally beaten recently.

Gavin Joseph, victim of a brutal assault by a gang of teens in
Illinois credit NY Daily News

This was done by a gang of 5 teens. They were supposed to be his friends,

This abuse seems to be becoming a terrible new trend that came to national attention with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge assault on an autistic teenager. I don't know why this is happening but it needs to stop and quickly.

Here is a breakdown of the disturbing sequence of events related to the type of catastrophe that I am so concerned about.

1. Parents, desperate to make their neurodivergent teens "indistinguishable from their peers" push them into friendships with typical teens without following up and insuring that their teens are not being used as objects of hate and bullied. 

2. Other teens, pretending to be friends, subject the neurodivergent teen to sustained verbal and physical abuse under the guise of friendship.

3. As the abuse is not reported by the victim who is told by all that these are their friends, it escalates until a catastrophic abuse event occurs.

4. The perpetrators often brazenly record the event.

5. Parents discover the abuse and display video, photographs and other evidence all over the internet.

6. Police, in response to public outcry, pursue the perpetrators. The state and local authorities file charges against the perpetrators.

7.  No one explains to the victim's family that this is an escalation in what was a long period of abuse suffered by the victim. No one warns parents that the victim may recant or refuse to press charges for fear of losing the relationship with their abusers. Parents and the victims themselves seem to be unaware of the dynamics of abusive relationships, and that the wish to not press charges may be an indication of Stockholm syndrome (see definition below).

8. Where charges are filed no discussion of the fact that crimes of this nature against disabled people are considered hate crimes and should be adjudicated accordingly happens. Parents,  perpetrators, their families, even authorities may unconsciously or deliberately gaslight the victim until charges are dropped in exchange for "an apology, autism education/awareness, and autism related community service".

9. Parents never allow the victim to speak publicly either through written communication or with an attorney but instead speak for the victim. Victims are always convinced that the fault in the matter is their diagnosis. No civil case is pursued for the cost of the years of therapy and supports the victims might need. Because "autism awareness" is more important.

The wrongness of this screams at everyone, yet the public is fine with allowing perpetrators (who admit their disdain for autistic traits and use this as an excuse to assault them) to be set free to attack someone else's teen without being truly held accountable. That is not acceptable. This puts our entire community at risk. Because the next victim could be my son or someone else's daughter.

Gavin Joseph was beaten by those he thought were his friends, taught by these false friends that his autistic characteristics are so, to use his mother's description "creepy"  that if he is abused those who do so are just uninformed and must be educated, and then Gavin is allowed to believe that community service and autism awareness for others is more important than services he needs to navigate the world after becoming the victim of a crime.  Wow. Fail.

Parents, we need to insure that our teens understand that NO ONE has a right to do this to them. No

Lauren Bush, 17, pled guilty to sustained abuse
of another autistic teen in Maryland  she and
another girl not only tortured the teen but made
DVDs of the torture, which went on for years

one should be putting their hands on our people. My God what are these parents thinking? Their sons are assaulted and they don't allow the state to hold the perpetrators accountable. THIS IS A HATE CRIME. Assault against a disabled person because their disability makes assailants uncomfortable is a HATE CRIME. This is NOT the moment people choose to do autism awareness. These individuals will go on to abuse other disabled people and may continue to target other autistic victims. Worse, these parents failed to show their son that if someone harms him they will be held accountable such that they cannot harm him again.

This behavior on the part of parents of both the perpetrators and victims comes from a fundamentally ableist view that those qualities that make a person autistic are at fault for every negative event or criminal act against the victim. When parents allow the abusers of their disabled teens to walk free with an apology they are broadcasting a statement that disabled victims don't matter. The victim's human rights are violated, and their own parents are saying this is okay. Should parents of the perpetrators believe that this heinous crime against another teen should not merit jail time because the victim is disabled? No, I'm sorry. Disabled victims aren't less. If this were a teen without a diagnosis of Aspergers, if the teen were trans, or a racial minority, would they also be expected to allow the perpetrators to go free? Would this not be considered a hate crime?

Attorney and disability rights activist Shain Neumeier emphasized the problematic nature of a sentence of community service:

 "I was also really bothered by the element of the perpetrator having to do community service with other disabled people. One, disabled people are not punishment. Two, why should disabled people be stuck around a total (redacted) serving as his Get Out of Jail Free card?"

 Yet the media is spinning this story as if the victim taught his abusers a lesson?  Crimes against disabled people are now hate crimes for a reason. Sadly, these crimes are rarely prosecuted unless the victim is murdered, and the perpetrators often go on to target other disabled victims.

Thank God all parents aren't this oblivious to the impact this can have on our entire community. The parents of another autistic teenager who truly believed his abusers were his girlfriends did not back down, sympathize with the perpetrators, or blame the victim's disability and pursued charges against those who tortured and sexually abused him. Lauren Bush, his 17 year old classmate, and another 15 year old girl, presented themselves as his friends. He thought this torturing was friendship.  The parents' opinion differed from the teen's. He spoke to the press also, expressing why he did not wish to press charges and citing that one of the perpetrators said she was his girlfriend and this is why he submitted to the abuse. His parents expressed their disagreement with their son. But they respected his right to speak for himself, whether that be in verbal or written form or through an attorney, and treated him the way parents would treat any teen crime victim. They didn't speak for him even when they did not agree with him. But they also recognized that their son was the victim of prolonged abuse, and may not be aware of the impact this has on him. I also need to note that the perpetrators recorded the abuse, but we will never see it because the parents kept the recordings off the Internet.

It is up to us, every stakeholder in the autism and disability rights community to insure our people aren't abused like this anymore. We have to insure our teens get justice when they are the victims of violence and that what happened is not trivialized and spun as something to be forgiven. We have to work with our disabled disability rights activists and come up with a way to deliver a clear message to our teens and parents of what an abusive relationship is and we have to teach families to watch for the signs of abusive friendships before they escalate into the vicious assaults coming to light in the press these days.

Where are the voices of the disability rights advocacy organizations and the disability law centers on this topic? Whether the family or the local government wishes to pursue charges or not, the nature of these assaults should disturb people enough that someone should be filing a request the federal government pursue these incidents as hate crimes.

If the perpetrators were the parents, this would be front page news and everyone would have something to say.

 No experiment in socialization is worth victimizing ones children and having them assaulted. This is not a "teachable moment". This is moment you seek justice and show your teen they are people and have human rights. This is the moment one seek reparations for the years of therapeutic supports your surviving crime victim will need to overcome what was done to them. This is the time you seek family counseling for healing.

The saddest part about this is the trauma suffered by these victims will not manifest all at once. It will surface over time, and the victims will need intensive supports to overcome this. This should have been paid for by the assailants because they are the cause of it.

Disability rights, human rights, and social justice organizations.  Don't remain silent about these assaults and the rush to commute sentencing to community service and autism awareness. Please stand up for these victims. Help them.

Maybe we should take a break from yelling at the ignorant rants of movie stars who post photos that thoughtless parents themselves post publicly of their children's worst moments. Maybe we need a hiatus from arguing with the intractable ignorance entrenched in fear based parental groups fixated on proving the cause of their children's autism because they believe this will somehow miraculously solve everything. Maybe we should start doing work to mitigate this sequence of catastrophic events from happening to our people and insuring if it does happen someone is properly held accountable and the hate crime protections given to our community aren't just words on paper.

It is good that we mourn our dead and seek justice for the victims of murder by those they love and trust. Can we now fight for the living more too?

-------------------------

This post is dedicated to every autistic survivor of abuse, the autistic teens still being harmed out there, and the parents who stand with them.  Healing strength and love. Teens, don't be afraid of losing friends. Tell your parents or any adult you trust if this is happening to you.  kç

Special thanks to topic experts:

Shain Neumeier Esq.
Kassiane Sibley, Activist, Author, Topic expert We Are Like You Child Collective founder
Sparrow Rose Jones, Author, and blogger at  Unstrange Mind: Remapping My World
Savannah Nicole Logsdon-Breakstone, Activist, topic expert, blogger at Cracked Mirror In Shalott
Paula C. Durbin-Westby , Activist, topic blogger at  Paula Durbin Westby, Autistic

And all the survivors who bravely shared traumatic moments to help make this post better understood.

References

Why do victims of bullying not tell?
http://bullying.about.com/od/Victims/a/8-Reasons-Why-Victims-Of-Bullying-Dont-Tell.htm

Why a victim might not wish to press charges or report bullying:
Children Are Less Likely to Report Bullying if They Consider the Bully a Friend

What do I mean by Stockholm Syndrome?

1. Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors.Stockholm syndrome can be seen as a form of traumatic bonding, which does not necessarily require a hostage scenario, but which describes "strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other."[4] i -
2. Wikipedia

Standing At The Intersection of Adolescence, Race, and Disability

Police badge, credit Wiki media commons

This post may wander a bit. Recent events have made me  very emotional, shocked and sad.

Our son is twelve.  His father, sister and I have spent a major part of his life trying to meet a single goal before his thirteenth birthday. We have been trying to ensure he is equipped to survive his adolescence without being killed in a catastrophic encounter with police. He has been fortunate, and so far, safe. But recent events make it clear that we must act in some way to change the way things are or chances are, he may not be safe in the future.

When I realized that roughly 70% of people with disabilities encountered law enforcement more than once in their lifetimes, learned how many were victims of abuse and crime, and how many disabled males of color died in such encounters, I went to Annapolis to ask for an autism training bill for first responders. I later came to the realization that the training concept is inherently flawed and limited in its success.  For police officers, in particular, training them in awareness of autism and how someone autistic reacts to sirens, strobing lights, and people shouting at them wasn't the solution to the problem of keeping our son and his nonspeaking peers from accidentally being shot or wrongfully arrested in a police encounter.  Particularly for autistic and other neurodivergent males of color, police training in other states did not deter or reduce catastrophic encounters. Understand that  Freddie Gray was diagnosed with disabilities resulting from lifetime exposure to lead paint poisoning common to the low-income housing in West Baltimore. Freddie Gray was neurodivergent. His death is not counted as a Black disabled catastrophic encounter death but it should be.

 I have recently realized I must accept the idea that just about the only way to ensure our nonspeaking autistic son isn't harmed is instilling in him that he must avoid the police as much as possible.

The only legislative goal that will reduce catastrophic encounters with law enforcement for neurodivergent males in general and neurodivergent Black and brown males, in particular, is legislation aimed at not placing them in the path of police, to begin with.

I never thought I would have to consider how to teach my son to avoid police.  But there is no denying that recent events demonstrate race relations in this area of modern society have reversed 50 years, and we are now living in a dangerously polarized country. So here we are with our sweet son, standing at this intersection of racism, ableism, and disability. We are looking for breadcrumbs we can leave to aid him in preserving his own life  and the thought is frightening. So frightening that I can say the only thing that frightens me more is the rising number of autistic school children being arrested for school infractions and forced into the criminal justice system .

How do we teach him that the safest way to deal with law enforcement is to avoid engaging them at all?  Even if he needs help. Even if they seem kind and appear to understand he is unable to speak. Despite what he's been presented by well-meaning people who don't know what it means to be a Black man in America. Because if he meets a good cop one day, he may meet the one that hates him the next, and that could end his life. Too many others have died because they could not speak and were not provided with the means to respond when police ordered  them to do so.

The bullet-riddled windshield of Timothy Russell's car shows where some of the 137 bullets police fired at the car landed. (credit: Marvin Fong/The Plain Dealer)

One of my main goals for the remainder of my life is lowering the odds that my only son will die  by pushing our community to rethink what the role of law enforcement should be in our lives and to support efforts to remove law enforcement from inappropriate roles in the lives of autism families so we are able to  avoid police engagement as much as humanly possible. I am tired of watching our people die.

We are traumatized and tired of being helpless witnesses to the lives destroyed and lost in such encounters.  Freddie Gray,  Matthew Ajibade, Tario Anderson, Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice, Aiyana Stanley-Jones. It is the list of the dead and injured that just keeps getting longer by the month while the criminal justice system keeps failing them and our entire race, first by allowing them to come to harm, second by allowing those who harmed them to not be made responsible for their actions, and third, by  blaming the victims in order to absolve the perpetrators. I continue to repeat that even someone who is suspected of committing a crime has the right to be safely arrested and tried by a jury of his peers. Police are never supposed to be executioners.

Knowing police officers who sully the uniform will not be held accountable for any wrongdoing, regardless of how much evidence of their guilt is apparent is soul destroying. We've been swallowing this bitter bill for my entire life. It is a spiritual struggle  to continue to defiantly declare one's right to exist and human right to humane treatment knowing this is true. Here is one of many examples of justice denied.

Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo mounted a car that 5 other police officers had riddled with bullets after "confusing the car backfiring with a gunshot"  and continued shooting down into the windshield of said car until the two already wounded victims, Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell, where dead. Officer Brelo was acquitted of any wrongdoing. 137 bullets were not, in a judge's opinion, excessive use of force.  If you believe that compliance of a traffic stop would have changed the conclusion of this encounter, then you are deceiving yourselves. If the moment the car backfired, the knee-jerk reaction was to shoot with impunity,  this act was driven by the presumption that Black suspects are dangerous criminals who should be shot. That is racial profiling. Which makes this a hate crime. This was never going to be an arrest. It was an execution.  Understand why we fear for our son. If you don't understand and don't act to help everyone fighting to change this deadly sequence of events, more will die.

This week the Supreme Court ruled in favor of San Francisco in the case of City and County of San Francisco v. Sheehan, overturning the decisions of all lower courts and placing all disabled people at risk. Specifically, they ruled that police who forcibly enter the premises and shoot a mental health patient have qualified immunity from litigation. This sets a legal precedent that weakens ADA protections despite the court's attempt to bypass the impact on ADA issue and enables further cases of excessive use of force when dealing with neurodivergent people in general and mental health consumers in particular.

I have already pointed out  here  that both Paul Childs and Stephon Watts were shot dead by police officers who had autism training, knew them, and had even helped them in the past. A police officer being familiar with your son's autism, knowing your son doesn't use verbal speech, being trained to approach and manage neurodivergent people doesn't protect them from being shot by those very police officers later on.

Jurors in the trial of the New Orleans police officers who shot multiple
victims including the Madison brothers inspecting Danziger bridge. Credit
Michael DeMocker NOLA Media

If I seem pessimistic about what is happening it is because even in cases where video evidence of wrongdoing supports witness accounts,  and even in cases where convictions are handed down, inevitably, as in the Supreme Court decision in San Francisco v Sheehan, justice eludes the victim. The conviction of the New Orleans police officers who shot among others 40-year-old autistic Ronald Madison and his brother Lonnie, who was trying to walk him over the bridge and out of New Orleans after Katrina, was overturned and they have now been granted a new trial. We all know these men will never see prison. Ronald Madison was a gentle person, loved by his family and neighbors. His brother refused to leave New Orleans without him and remained behind to help lead Ronald out after the storm because he didn't understand why he had to leave his home. It seems now that no one will ever answer for the innocent lives taken that day either.

If you ask my opinion of possible solutions to keep our autistic offspring of color safe by avoiding unnecessary engagement with law enforcement, I'll respond that I have a list. Here is part of that list

1. Retrain 911 operators to clearly distinguish the difference between a mental health crisis call and a law enforcement call. Do NOT use police officers as mental health support staff to transport MH consumers in crisis to help facilities. 

2. Train parents to properly request an ambulance and mental health crisis support; train loved ones and caregivers not to call the police unless a weapon is involved.

3. Remove the use of police and school resource officers (SROs) from the chain of school discipline and prohibit the profiling of disabled K12 students through files maintained by SROs, as they are neither qualified psychologists or psychiatrists.

4. Block school administration from calling the police to arrest students for school-related infractions and fine them if they do so. This holds them accountable for not providing staffing support for disabled students who require it.

5. Ensure that any incident involving the arrest of disabled students is automatically reviewed by that state's department of education's office of civil rights to assess the degree of violation of the student's civil rights and ensure the student is provided with properly trained classroom  support staff per IDEA .

6.  Establish grassroots mental health crisis support teams and  peer-run respite and crisis centers for MH consumers. This will increase respite for MH consumers and families, averting  crises where police might be called to homes or schools for interventions outside the scope of law enforcement                                                                                                                                                                                           .

I must continue my efforts to find a way to explain this all to my son and together we must ensure that even after we, his parents, are gone he knows how to survive as a nonspeaking  neurodivergent male of color in this increasingly corrosive world of hate.

God help us both.
-------------------------------
References:
Why Autism Training For Law Enforcement Does Not Work
http://theautismwars.blogspot.com/2014/08/why-autism-training-for-law-enforcement.html
What We Lose When Police Blame Victims For Their Own Deaths
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/15/police-shootings-victim-blaming_n_7284792.html
Blow to ADA of Supreme Court Decision in San Francisco v Sheehan
http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/city-and-county-of-san-francisco-california-v-sheehan/
Cleveland officer not guilty over deaths of two people shot at 137 times by police
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/23/cleveland-officer-not-guilty-shot-137-times-police
Reversal of Danziger Bridge convictions a 'bitter pill' for Hurricane Katrina survivors
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/09/reversal_of_danziger_bridge_co.html

Neurodivergence and The Term Normal

Young girl to Azeem:                          "Did God paint you?"
Azeem (Morgan Freeman):                  "For certain."
Young girl:                                           "Why?"
Azeem:                                                 "Because Allah loves infinite variety."

- "Robin Hood Prince of Thieves"

I'm on a mission to throw out the word "normal" from vocabulary and dialog related to autism. The main reason is no matter where I travel in the world or who I meet, I have never come across a "normal" person. The word normal in the lexicon of autism is used to denote an idealized average child. Neurodivergent children, like human skin colors, cannot be based upon any ideal. There is too much infinite variety in everything else about us. Why should our neurology be any different? 

Image Description: Series of photographs of people of widely varied colors under each person's photo is the Pantone number that exactly matches their skin tone ©Angelica Dass pantone skin color spectrum chart

Artist Angelica Dass has raised the bar on cataloging the spectrum of human color variation with her Humanae project. There is no one in any discipline that serves the autism community cataloging and mapping the spectrum of neurodivergence in people.  When research is done on neurodivergence it is never done with the intent of cataloging divergence as variation and recommending accommodation and support where neurology poses barriers to inclusion.  We do not have a map of  the spectrum of divergence in neurology. As long as we fail to properly study the human brain before making sweeping decisions, such as creating and prescribing medication to suppress and "correct" things we don't understand,  the term autism will continue to be used as a multimillion dollar medical model cash cow boogie man that is of no benefit to either neurodivergent people or their families. To set a standard mid point in a bell curve of what constitutes "normal" brain function without cataloging the entire spectrum of human brain variance on this earth is a bizarre way to go about science. An interaction I just had with my neurodivergent son brought to mind the reason for this part of the culture of ableist viewpoints in perception of neurological difference. Most research is done without the input and needs assessment of autistic people themselves. So they have no voice in what is and is not done with regards to the idea of accepting variations in neurology in general and diverse autistic expressions in particular.

Before you rush to say you know of any "normal" person start by defining what normal is in your mind. You'll find that 'normal' neurology is heavily culturally defined.

Look at your neurodivergent loved ones as who they are. Don't compare them to a societally imposed standard they aren't meant to meet and find them lacking. Then see about advocating for services, supports and accommodations that will help them gain societal inclusion, autonomy, self agency and self advocacy. Expand beyond the limits of terms like 'normal,' understand that variance in neurology like variance in every other aspect of human expression is meant to exist and help to work on cataloging, understanding, and embracing that variance. 

Peace

For Sharon da Vanport

Two Standard Deviations from the Mean

"More. like. you.than.not!"

-Larry Bissonnette,  "Wretches & Jabberers"

I was in a meeting with my education services officer (ESO), academic adviser, and psychology professor. The ESO started off right away. "We received your test results today." "We want to rework your academic goals for the remainder of your freshman year with us accordingly." All three men were staring at me strangely. This felt like a very bad sign. 

The counselor mumbled, "it's amazing." "What is going on?" I snapped, really disturbed by now. My psych professor said, "You've tested over two standard deviations above the mean." "We think you should test out of your general educational requirements and take the 400-level psych courses we're offering next term." They went on to say I could handle an additional 3 semester hours a term with no issues. I expressed concern that I was trying to hold down a job and did not want to risk my scholarship and BASIC (what would later become Pell) Grant with a subsequent poor performance if I could not manage the additional course load. They were more confident about my ability to manage the added coursework than I was. The following semester, I was approved to take Child Psychology and Animal Behavior, senior-level psychology classes. 

What I will never forget about that incident was the three men staring the entire time we spoke. I felt like a zoo exhibit throughout the interview. They stared as if they suddenly realized I was a creature from another solar system. 

I was 18. I learned a new, painful lesson; how people react emotionally when they learn a person is more than two standard deviations above a western societal construct called 'average intelligence.' Measured by a testing instrument with eugenic origins. I learned how one newly aquired societal label changed how the entire world views a person. I was never treated in the same causally friendly way by faculty and staff again.

Twenty-eight years later, I sat in a pediatric neurologist's office as he explained our son's comprehensive evaluation results in a flat, cold voice. All I could remember were groups of words slapping consciousness painfully:  global developmental delays, nonspeaking autism, intellectual disability so 'severe' there was no measurable baseline. He threw out a rough estimate of 'mental age.' I thought, here it is. A deadly new label. "is he saying my baby is at least two standard deviations below their idea of an intelligence mean?" 

We were told there was nothing we could do. The future was grim for our son. Over two standard deviations from the mean. Now, why was that familiar? At that moment, I couldn't catch the thought thread and reel in why it might be important. 

Mu's father is a brilliant man. The term 'genius' has been used by those who know the minutiae of his creations. The test of eugenic origins has not been used to add a number to that label. We had plans for our son. Turkish math courses, a coding school, and robot building. The day we got that diagnosis, we began thinking after we moved past tears and shock. We called his adult sister. She stood in the middle of her workplace, crying, and all her coworkers rushed to her side, knowing something was wrong but not understanding why silent tears were flowing. Our family's collective ability to think and think well helped us push past the trauma of how this diagnosis was delivered to our son and us. We held hands with our son and spoke together softly, saying we had to regroup. Now the plan was to show our son how much we loved him. And to find out how our son could manage on his own. 

The new question was, could someone carrying the label of intellectual disability more than two standard deviations below this biased intelligence mean command his own life? Had anyone with our son's diagnosis accomplished this? Thanks to my husband, we approached that question as a series of engineering problems. We have been navigating and recalculating solution arrays on the fly ever since. 

The connecting thread of experience caught me after an incident at the playground with my son. Someone said something awful about him right to his face. I corrected them. I told them he understood exactly what they said. I did the "what is autism" speech. The child, much older than my son, apologized to me. "No," I said. "Apologize to him." A hesitant apology came. The playground had become an unwelcome place for us again. As I settled my boy in his adaptive stroller and turned us toward home, the silent, persistent staring followed, and I felt that sense of vertigo that sometimes accompanies flashbacks.  

The realization came, and that thread of memory yanked itself to our moment on the playground. I was back in time looking at three men who had met me a lifetime ago, who once spoke with relaxed ease to me when exchanging social pleasantries in the school halls. Looking at how they changed when they held in their hands the knowledge that the same student they conversed with and encouraged was labeled more than two standard deviations from the biased 'intelligence' mean. And the looks were precisely the same. It was the same type of horrible, distancing stare. Like the child bully and her friends at the playground, staring as if my son could not be like them.

My son and I are equidistant from the mean in society's perceptions of measured intelligence. We are both somewhere beyond two standard deviations from that fabricated mean. Neither of us is labeled mean/typical/average intelligence. We are both neurodivergent. Those two lines eventually meet, and the moment of that intersectional meeting point makes us oddly equal.

That additional strange fact, when linked to all the knotted ties that bind me to our son, makes blaming him for being different impossible. I can't play that mind game some other parents play when they hear their offspring are autistic. He is not different. Not from the wrong planet. He is very much my son. 

I decided genuine respect and acceptance meant understanding that part of those unique characteristics that make our son diverse are from the same genetic soup that floated together to create us, his parents. I understood that day on the way back from that playground that our equidistance from the mean was a sign I needed to move beyond simply accepting him and presume his competence. As my husband put it, the problem was not our son. It was an environment not engineered to accommodate his needs. The point of intersection was love. That love moved us through time and space to this moment, when our son, despite diagnoses, forecasts of doom, and failed attempts to use intelligence tools that have no way of measuring his intelligence or his value as a human being to chain him to series of labels, has thrived.

More.like.me.than.not